


The Wrong Sort (pt 1)

by prismaticjill42



Series: Vampire Drarry [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drarry, Healer Draco Malfoy, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-War, Vampire Drarry, Vampire Harry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-18 02:46:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17572796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prismaticjill42/pseuds/prismaticjill42
Summary: Healer Draco Malfoy must take care of an unknown John Doe found prone and anemic just outside of the village of Hogsmeade, but what if that John Doe is the most famous wizard the world has ever seen?





	The Wrong Sort (pt 1)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [midgaardian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/midgaardian/gifts).



The Wrong Sort

 

_“There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights.”_

 

White curtains billowed all around the sterile room in a soft, manufactured breeze. The St. Mungos Recovery Ward was stretched into a long, corridor like space where near endless rows of beds were circled by hovering white partition curtains. The ward was overwhelmingly bright; the limestone walls, the white and glossy floors, the cream colored sheets and pillows all conjured such clear and soft dreams for the patients here trying to heal. All was quiet.

Draco Malfoy, in the silver robes of the advanced healers, stood at the end of one particular bed. He waved his hand and a roll of parchment appeared in the air before him. _John Doe_. _Found prone in a field on the Southern end of Hogsmeade Village. Unconscious, but stable._ Draco rolled the parchment back up and it blinked out of sight with a silent pop. He pulled his wand from his inner robes and with a gentle hand, opened the curtains and looked in on his patient.

The man before him was gravely anemic, his body thin and paling against the sheet that tucked him cozily into bed. Though Draco had seen many patients in many forms of sickness and injury, he gasped in surprise as he looked down at the body of Harry Potter—no, not Harry, someone very like him. Draco's brow scrunched in concern as he approached the bedside, looking over the gaunt but familiar face of a man his age. It could have been Harry but for the almost electric grayed hair and the drained, pallid skin and the heavy eyes inset in a shadowy gloom. Draco set to work.

A cursory wave of Draco's wand over the patient's body revealed that his suspicions were correct. The kind of deathly glow of his skin, the darkness around his eyes, the fact that he was very much alive despite appearing as if all vibrancy would be forever lost to him, all pointed to one diagnosis—albeit a rare one these days. He had been found outside of the village by a pale, pulsing patronus charm that surrounded his body and acted as a sort of mayday signal to anyone nearby. He had been side-along apparated here and within hours transferred to the Recovery Ward to await the prognosis of a more advanced healer. In time they would find out who he is, call his family if he had one, and continue down the path of healing.

But Draco was struck by his unmoving visage and the sort of peaceful way he lay there: impossibly ill but left to dream in the silent anonymity of St. Mungos. When he woke, whoever he was would be no longer relevant in light of the bad news. It was always that way. Though Draco healed many in his time here, these were the types of cases that continued to haunt him.

He _accioed_ a vial of dark, red liquid blood. It was only a small amount, enough to start the process. The patient would always need it, at regular intervals, for the rest of his life, along with potions to placate his changing moods if he wanted to live a relatively normal life. The potions masters of St. Mungos many ages ago had manufactured a sort of system to obtain the necessary human blood without the repercussions of bites, dolled out in monthly prescriptions as if it were something mundane, like to regulate cholesterol. It wouldn't be the best solution, but it was a harmless one. Draco conjured the needle and administered the fresh blood directly into that feeble network of veins and arteries. It was just a small drip but it would start the process.

Already the sallow skin began to warm and the roots of his hair darkened from gray to brown. Draco looked on, thinking more and more that the John Doe before him was that familiar hero of his childhood, rather that he was the man that had saved him twice over, and his heart ached at the thought. Draco sighed and leaned over the bed to closer inspect the dosing face of his patient. Instead of pallid, he was now strong. The square of his jaw, the light brown of his skin, it was the face he had looked on many years ago as the face of a friend. Draco brought his hand to the patient's brow unable to resist the urge to just make sure. He pushed a mess of half gray half darkening brunette hair out of his eyes and saw it. The smooth, unblemished skin of his forehead glittered and then suddenly the faint spark of a famous lightning bolt scar was visible again.

* * *

Harry awoke foggy. He slowly opened his eyes and took in the brightness all around him. His last memories were of the dark and cold tunnels beneath the school leading out into the village and of the fields and forests beyond. He turned his head and looked out at the rest of the room he was in, some sort of hospital room where tall curtains created a private space. There was a man sitting in a tan leather arm chair reading a newspaper. Between him and the bed there was a glass side table that had atop it a large vase full of colorful flowers and a few empty vials and needles. Harry stared at the man as he casually read through the paper.

“Malfoy?” Harry asked. There was really only one person it could be, honey blonde hair slicked back, dainty hands, tailored dark navy trousers and leather wingtip shoes. But Harry had no idea why he would be in _his_ hospital room.

Draco pulled the paper into his lap and looked up at Harry with a soft surprise, as if to say _you're awake_. Instead he leaned forward and said, “you're missing.”

“I'm what?”

“Missing, here,” Draco held the newspaper out in front of Harry so he could see the headline for himself. Harry grabbed the paper and held it close to his face; he was not wearing his glasses.

It was the Daily Prophet. Plastered across the front page was a familiar spread—a photo of him, this time cropped from a Hogwarts faculty holiday photo taken two years ago, and the large, panic stricken headline: HARRY POTTER MISSING FROM HOGWARTS POST. Harry tried to read the smaller print below but shut his eyes tight in pain. He wasn't awake enough yet to handle the news of his own disappearance, or rather, something worse was happening. Harry tried not to think about the worst case scenario, but he remembered where he had been. That this hospital hadn't alerted the press yet that he was, in fact, found was surprising.

Draco was now standing next to Harry's bed and had pulled out his wand. A soft trail of magic gently issued from it and circled around Harry's figure. Harry laid the newspaper down across his lap and looked up at Draco seeing now the silver robes pinned at his throat and draped over his thin frame, the navy suit beneath obscured again by the St. Mungos uniform.

“You're a healer.”

“Very astute of you to notice, Potter.”

Harry laid back and closed his eyes, a wave of nausea overcoming him. He was definitely not supposed to be trying to _think_ just yet. Of course Draco was here _only_ in a professional context. Harry tried to focus on the silver robes and the kindness in Draco's features, something he had never taken the time to notice before but he groaned out in pain instead.

“What's wrong with me?”

Draco didn't answer and had already pulled up another vial of blood and was in the process of emptying it into Harry's system. Harry's eyes flew open as the blood hit his veins, his pupils dilating and then the whole of his body relaxing with the easing of the tension that had been building. Draco watched as the brown-red color of his eyes slowly trickled back into a soft hazel green. Much of the color had returned to his skin over the night, and his body was warm to the touch. His hair was dark brown again and messy and tangled every which way from turning in the night. All he needed was his glasses and he would look almost normal. As Harry's vision focused again Draco looked away and stepped back from the bed, putting the empty vial with the others and clearing off the table with a wave of his wand.

“What did you give me?”

Draco slid his wand into the inside pocket of his robes and turned back to face Harry. Harry was looking up at him from the bed, alive, and to anyone outside this hospital looking very vital and well. But he was not.

“Throughout the night you have been given regular doses of asphodel and dittany, to help heal your internal wounds.”

Harry winced and gingerly ran his fingers along his stomach. He remembered his body flying backward with a wave of attacks, remembered it hitting the hardened ground of the passageway and bruising his torso. He had been caught off guard as he followed the tunnels into Hogsmeade, not realizing that the Carrows would be waiting within its dank and dismal caverns. Harry looked up expectantly at Draco.

Draco dropped his gaze from Harry's and took a moment before continuing. He often had to relay bad news to patients and their families. As an advanced healer at St. Mungos, Draco was familiar with the vast and often mysterious magical maladies they treated, even the rare ones, as was the case now. Those patients weren't always the hero of the wizarding world, however.

“And just now,” Draco waved his hand over the end table beside the bed and a vial of blood rose up from beneath and Draco picked it up and rolled it between his fingers and thumb before showing it to Harry. “Human blood—to stave off the thirst.”

Harry closed his eyes again, this time not so much in pain. The potions mingling with the blood in his system were keeping him steady, calmed. Yes, he now remembered, that was how that duel had ended...

“Regular intake of our mixture should prevent any uncontrollable cravings. Of course, for the first few months, you'll need it more often and there will be more pain. I recommend rest, at home. You shouldn't expect to return to your position until after the holidays, certainly.”

Harry had rolled over onto his side away from Draco as he dolled out instructions as if it were a sort of head cold and Harry wasn't really the monster that he now was. Draco looked up at him, the vial still in his hand, and he looked from it to Harry and back again. The vial was small, barely a drip, as before, the dark maroon of the blood just beginning to coagulate at the top. It was because, in the beginning stages, all that was needed was a taste to stop the urges—though there would be many urges. Over time the condition would calm and level out; he'd have to intake more with each dose but would only need it every so often. Potter could continue life as normal, provided no one from the press found out about it, and Draco seemed to remember that McGonagall had rather lenient policies regarding faculty. Really, if Harry Potter could defeat Lord Voldemort at seventeen and find himself in the middle of a vampire den twelve years later and survive, then he could live with this. Or perhaps, he had already been living with this. Draco wondered what exactly had happened before they found a mysterious wizard unconscious in a field. Was Harry Potter still saving the day?

Harry closed his eyes tighter, recalling the awful screeching sounds of Alecto Carrow from when she had dived for him as he lay beaten on the ground. And he remembered her face twelve years ago standing atop the staircase as rows of marching students filtered down into the Great Hall. He remembered walking past her as if he were just another student, and felt for a moment the singular dread of being again a helpless child. She had such a pallid face with dark and recessed eyes. Even back then she was formidable, the long years in seclusion had only made her more ravenous.

And then he remembered that he had been missing.

“Malfoy,” Harry turned back around and half sat up in the bed. The ease with which he moved startled Draco. He waved the vial away, wishing not to have to look at it any longer. He felt suddenly a bit squeamish—a new feeling for him after several years in this profession, but he straightened his shoulders and looked down at Har—his patient.

“Hmm?”

“Why, uh,” Harry stumbled with his words. “If I'm here,” Harry gestured down at his lap, the bed, the hospital room. Draco nodded patiently. “Why am I missing, exactly?”

“Oh, well, two reasons. You were found in a field by your patronus—not in stag form, of course everyone would know that was you, a sort of patronus field. Because of your, condition, you were quite unrecognizable. When you experience the thirst,” it was clear to Draco now that Harry had not been suffering this particular affliction before last night. “in the first stages, and if ever you were to go without blood for many weeks, it'll appear as if the life is drained from you. You were so white even your scars seemed to have faded away.”

“Oh.” Harry looked down at his body, covered in hospital robes, and looked at his hands and arms. His brown skin was as it always was, perhaps, if he looked close enough, a little too pale. “What's the second reason?”

“Privacy of course. St. Mungos does not share patient records with the press, Potter, not even yours. That includes record of you even being here at all.”

“That makes sense, yeah.” Harry still seemed unsure. Draco took a step forward and gently laid a hand on Harry's shoulder.

“We take an unbreakable vow. I wouldn't tell anyone, I can't, anyway.”

Harry nodded. He felt ashamed, of being here of being laid bare before none other than Draco Malfoy. Though their rivalry had fizzled away with the fiendfyre in the Room of Requirement all those years ago, there was a vulnerability that Harry felt before him now. Fame was a strange thing, and Harry had spent his fair share with healers before now. He regularly showed up with scrapes and strange ailments in the Hogwarts Hospital Wing during his years as a professor for the Defense Against the Dark Arts. Some things never change. But with Draco, it was not a stranger he could wave away who didn't know the _real_ him. He had the sense that Draco did know him, in that small and intimate way that many of the others in the battle did. Harry tried to reassure himself that he'd have surely felt the same embarrassment sitting before Neville.

“If you would like,” Draco pulled his hand away and stepped to the end of the bed, holding himself professionally before Harry, but still looking on him kindly. “we can contact anyone you'd like.”

“No,” Harry said softly. “Thank you, but I think I'd like to be alone.”

“Of course. Someone will be in for your next dose, but if you need anything before then,” Draco pointed to the end table where there was a button for assistance. “That will call me directly.”

“It's awfully muggle,” Harry smiled to himself.

“Well--uh--”

“Thanks, Malfoy.”

Draco nodded and pulled the curtain to the side.

“Wait, er, the flowers?”

Draco immediately felt his skin flush a pale pink all across his neck and high on his cheeks.

“If I'm missing, and all that,” Harry scratched the back of his head and stuck his fingers through his tangled hair.

“Oh, they're just from the staff.” Draco stepped out in to the corridor and gently closed the curtains behind him, walking as slowly and calmly as he could back to his office. He could hear a faint _thank you_ call out from Harry's room.

 * * *

Harry didn't feel sick. After a time he had started to expect the pains that came on him and, like clockwork, assistant healers came in and out with small drips of blood to calm his system. With each added dose Harry felt his usual strength return to him, and then, perhaps, a bit more. He flexed his wandless magic but found that much of it was dampened by the curtained space he was in. It was probably the curtains themselves. He figured that there must be a lot of people here that needed to be dampened in that way. It was possible that _he_ couldn't be trusted. When the pains washed through him again, he no longer trusted himself. He would silently beg for the healer minutes before they were due to arrive with their vials and their potions. And then the blood would satiate his needs and he would feel flushed with power once again. When the day faded into a lull of downtime, that was when everything returned to him.

 

Harry stepped into the familiar pathway, which wove underneath Hogwarts for some of the way and then underneath the open, sprawling fields and then eventually resurfaced outside of Hogsmeade Village. He remembered it from his younger days, before Lord Voldemort had returned during the tournament in fourth year. He remembered when he would sneak through this long passage in his invisibility cloak and join up with Ron and Hermione at Honeydukes, or the Shrieking Shack, anywhere they could not be found out by overly clever professors. He smiled to himself and thought that he would certainly notice a student sneaking around where they weren't supposed to be only because he knew those ways so well. He figured that was partly what made him a great professor—or maybe it made him an old man. He wasn't so old these days, but the calm and the comfort of his life now certainly felt a bit like a retirement.

As he walked further down into the dank and the deep, the easy breeze of early Autumn faded away and everything was static and stale. Harry felt his breathing come more difficult, and he held his wand out ahead of him but waved away the light he had been using. A man from the village, an old farmer named John Seward, had alerted the school of the comings and goings of robed figures at the edge of the passageway. Long ago, when the passage had been formed, the Seward family had been tasked with guarding it. Harry knew this, now, from McGonagall, along with other Hogwarts security secrets he had never known as a student, but he still couldn't help but burn red knowing that this farmer had let Harry and Harry's father and all of their various friends through without much of second thought over the years. Kids will be kids, Harry reminded himself. But robed figures coming and going all throughout the night and disappearing just at the edge of dawn, those were something to worry over.

The tunnel began to turn tightly to the right and Harry stopped and leaned against the rocky wall to listen. There was nothing up ahead of him that he could hear or see but a deep and consuming darkness. Harry remembered that just a quarter of a mile before the passage way resurfaced near the farmer's field there was a little cleared room, and it created a cavernous black hole effect. It was like swimming in the open ocean and then suddenly finding yourself out beyond the reef, the depths of the ocean turning it dark and seemingly bottomless. His instincts told him to go carefully. He gripped his wand a little tighter and took a step towards the clearing.

Silence. Harry continued forward. He felt the darkness wash over him the closer he got and wondered if it was actually magic instead of a trick of the earth. He heard the hissing of a spell before the incantation fully registered. A spark of burning blood-orange sped towards him.

Harry blocked the spell with a shield of white light and stepped backward towards what he thought would be the solid wall.

“Expelliarmus!” Harry shouted into the cavern but his spell whizzed out before him and blinked out of existence. There was no one there to disarm. Harry held his wand out in front of him, desperately scanning the open room before him but as the shield faded so, too, the only light and he was once again in total darkness. He stepped back and back but the wall of the tunnel he had been in had fallen away, or was gone, and it was only the solid earth beneath his feet that grounded him. With his left hand he reached behind him and tried to feel for the edge of the clearing. _It wasn't this big before, was it?_

“Was it?” A voice echoed Harry's thought and he looked wildly around him.

A legilimens, a wandless one, in the dark?

The back of Harry's foot scraped against rock and he stumbled backward into it. It was freezing. The temperature in the tunnel had dropped dramatically since Harry had entered this space. There was still no wind, no sound but for that whisper of a voice and Harry's own movement, and the air was bitter cold.

Another spell screeched through the cavern. Harry blocked it again. This time it bored through his shield spell and singed it away. Harry ran along the wall to the left, keeping his hand grazing against the rock so he would know that he was near it or know if it turned off into any other passageways that had been created. A streak of flaming red scattered bits of rock and earth near his head and a whole part of the wall began to tumble down.

“Lumos Maxima!” Harry held his wand tightly as light burst from the end of his wand and flew off to the edges of the room to illuminate it. For a moment he was struck blind by the brightness. He kept running, if anything to get away from the collapsing rock, until he could see into the space.

Harry stopped. His chest rose heavy with his ragged, exhausted breathing. His eyes scanned the room. The passage way continued out from here just a few yards away. The spell had revealed the whole of the clearing—it really was no larger than it had been in his younger days, and more than that, it was empty.

* * *

Draco walked through the Recovery Ward down to Harry's bed. He had removed his silver healer robes and instead had put on a heavy black coat. Under his arm he carried a pocketbook which contained a few unfinished reports and a research paper on modern vampirism. He was, perhaps, overly curious. When he got to Harry's bed he paused.

Harry groaned and sat back in the hospital bed, hitting his head against the stone wall behind him. He didn't have his wand. He was still wearing a light blue hospital robe and under it nothing but a starchy white gown. Really, even wizards had to deal with this shit? The last hour had been excruciatingly boring. A younger healer, after administering his latest round of potions, had asked if he wanted her to contact anyone and Harry quietly told her no. He simply wanted to be released. He felt _fine_. Really he felt more than fine, it was only the dampening of his magic in this curtained room that had him off his game. He had been trying to summon his clothing and wand for the last thirty or so minutes without success.

“Mr. Potter,” Draco drew back the curtain just a bit and looked in on Harry.

Harry sat up and looked squarely at Draco, the way he hovered between the hallway and inside was strangely formal. He raised his eyebrows.

“ _Mister Potter,_ ” Harry said mocking Draco.

“Shut up,” Draco said, smirking as he sidled into the room.

“Well, Mr. Malfoy,” Harry started, swinging his legs over the bed and standing up. “What do I gotta do to check myself out?”

“No.” Draco said simply, and gestured for Harry to return to the bed.

“No?”

“It will be a couple of weeks, Potter.”

Harry sat back down and looked to the opening in the curtain where Draco had just come from. He had spent a lot of his childhood in the Hospital Wing, sometimes for serious things, other times for just teenage antics. He always had Ron and Hermione close to him, or the Weasleys, Seamus, Luna. He was nearly thirty now, again in a bed like this one, but alone.

Draco seemed to sense his restlessness, and he walked a bit further into the room, setting his pocket book down on the end table.

“You're doing well. You've regained your strength no doubt, but you will require regular supervision for a little while. Until you're regulated. It's because...”

“It's because I'm a danger to society.”

Draco stood in silence looking down at Harry. He looked so small. Though the blood and the potions had been quick in recovering his usual stamina and warmth, Harry looked like any other patient in that moment—crumpled into himself, the dowdy powder blue of the robes making him look infantile. And he wasn't wrong. Vampirism, though easily managed for the most part, was dangerous in the wrong hands—in the inexperienced like Harry or in the malevolent like those that had turned him.

“I'm sorry, Harry.”

Harry looked up at Draco. It was hard to remember that he was his healer. In the moment it felt as if he was taking on the role his childhood friends had used to play, at his bedside in times of trouble.

Harry swallowed hard. He felt a bubbling pit of emotions start to coalesce inside of him and rise to lodge in his throat. His eyes were teary but he blinked and looked away from Draco.

“I couldn't stop them,” Harry said simply. He shrugged his shoulders and stared blankly at the space straight ahead where the curtains touched the floor.

“Alecto Carrow, and Amycus, and four or five others,” Harry continued. Draco furrowed his brow and listened. He hadn't expected Harry to explain any of it to him, he didn't require an explanation to heal his patients, and this—he thought was likely deeply personal. And this was a Harry that Draco barely knew.

“They were waiting for me. We didn't know what we were walking into, which was incredibly stupid of me. Hermione would tell me that. I guess I thought...” Harry trailed off. He thought he could just walk into a chamber like that as if it contained nothing more than a giant snake and all it would take to defeat it would be a magical piece of fabric and some bravery.

The Carrows were an old family, as were the Malfoys and the Blacks and the Notts and Prewetts, all along down the many pure wizarding bloodlines. But the Carrows were old in a different way. Amycus and Alecto themselves were several hundreds of years old, and their forebears, and onward on back. Each wizard and witch of the Carrow family line stretched themselves into a painful—as Harry now knew—immortality. It was an immorality well hidden for many decades, as vampirism fell into the dust of the wizarding world's collective conscience. No one knew what they truly were. It was a rare thing to be a vampire, now-a-days, and thus it was an uncertain thing. They had been hunted for much of the nineteenth century after all, when it was discovered what would kill them, and almost fell into extinction before the Ministry of Magic outlawed such practices. Muggles were intensely afraid of them. They appeared in their literature as fiends of an old world order, a dark religion to scare modern, reasonable folk. Dark witches and wizards, like the Carrows, in search of power as they always were, took up this mantle of the monstrous and decided that, actually, it suited them.

So much of the dark and the monstrous suited them.

“I'm like them, now, aren't I? There's no going back?” Harry looked up again to face Draco. Draco leaned against the end table.

“There is no way to reverse it, if that's what you're asking, only to manage.”

“What are the chances,” Harry shifted uncomfortably. “What are the chances that I can't manage it? That it overpowers me?”

“I can't say.”

“You don't know?”

“It depends on you.”

Harry thought about all of the darkness within him. Voldemort had been the source of a lot of the heaviness that he carried around his heart and Voldemort was gone, but pieces of it lingered. Harry held the deaths of the Battle of Hogwarts in his bones. He would never shake them off, he would only learn to live with it.

“You're a great wizard, Harry,” Draco said. “You'll--”

“A great wizard, like them,” Harry said, gesturing to the empty air. His arms dropped to his lap exasperated. “I don't want to end up like them, like Voldemort or Grindlewald or Dumbledore. All great wizards with darkness inside them that eventually overcame all other parts of them, darkness of power...and what difference is this? Me? This new monster? I'll be just like _him._ ”

“You are not a monster,” Draco pressed forward sternly. Vampires and other magical creatures were grossly misunderstood.

“How do you know that I won't become one? That I won't go bad?” Harry looked at Draco with tears in his eyes.

“Well, I know because someone very brave and very wise once told me that we all have the potential for good and bad, and that it is our choice between the two that defines who we are—that defines whether or not we are truly monstrous. And,” Draco smiled softly. “The kicker is that we can always choose good, no matter how inevitable the other side seems.” Draco remembered, just then, standing before Dumbledore and being surrounded by wizards much more powerful than himself, wizards who all had much higher stakes invested in this battle, wizards that shrunk Draco to a shivering, whimpering, lost little boy before their great lust for power. Even Dumbledore. Even Severus. Even, in a way, Harry hiding below. It had seemed inevitable, back then, that the darkness would overwhelm Draco and that he had no other choice. In fact, he had never been told, back then, that he had a choice. But by choosing not to act at all, Draco learned that lesson he had needed all along. He looked up at Harry just then, who was comically scrunching his brow in confusion.

“My mother,” Draco clarified.

Harry smiled then. He had heard just about the exact same thing from Sirius Black, long ago.

“How is she?” Harry asked.

Draco looked surprised by the question. “Good,” he said flatly.

Harry sensed Draco's unease over the subject of his mother, and he sheepishly rubbed his hands up his arms, settling back into the hospital bed. He still wasn't happy at the prospect of staying here all night.

“Right, so, all set Potter?” Draco reached for his pocket book. He was on his way home.

“Er—Draco?”

Draco paused, he wasn't sure if that was the first time he had heard his proper name come out of that golden voice.

“I, I tried to summon it but I don't have my wand and,” Harry gestured to the curtained room and Draco nodded, knowingly.

“You can't have your wand, I apologize, but it is policy.”

“I figured,” Harry nodded and pressed forward. “But what I need, actually, is my medicine.”

“Oh, the healers will--”

“Not that medicine. My muggle medicine.”

Draco set his pocketbook back down. He had, admittedly, not done a full check up on Harry—wanting him to rest and get back his usual life before they sat down and went through all of that regular healer-patient stuff. He silently chastised himself for it at this moment.

“What is it for? Our alchemists and potions masters can mimic many of the muggle medications.”

“I have nightmares, a part of my PTSD. I won't be able to sleep.”

Draco nodded and stood back in silence, thinking.

“It's on my desk at Hogwarts, if you could just summon it that's all I need.”

* * * 

It was only day two, but Harry was infinitely bored. He lay on his hospital bed looking at the white curtains and the white floors and the white bed and sheets and the empty arm chair. He resolutely refused to have any of his friends or colleagues alerted to his current state. Instead, in the early dawn, he had requested parchment so he could write to them. He wrote to Ron and Hermione, and Mrs. Weasley, knowing she would be nervous over the news—he had seen the Daily Prophet's article, it was not true, he was working on a special project with McGonagall. He told Minerva that he was safe, but that it was a much larger and pressing issue than they had anticipated. She should seal off all passageways into the school, permanently this time. At the last lines of the letter Harry considered all that Draco had told him about his condition. The fear that he would not be able to return to his post as Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor before the winter holidays, that perhaps Minerva would not accept him back, burned low in his chest. He was not yet ready to tell her, so he left it off. And then the day stretched on before him, slow and dull.

So he did what Harry Potter does best, got in trouble.

“Your patient, Draco...again,” Draco's assistant healer Genna stood in the doorway to Malfoy's office, exasperated.

Draco tried to bite back his laugh. He was writing out instructions to the potions masters concerning another case when his quill hovered over the parchment and he looked up at Genna. She was shaking her head.

“It's not funny.”

“It's a little funny.” He had heard the crashing and tumbling of various bits of furniture from the Recovery Ward—just a corridor away from his own office, but he wasn't going to assume it was Harry. Of course it was Harry.

“Can you go talk with him?” Genna had her hands on her hips. She had been an assistant healer under Draco for about two years now. She was insanely intelligent, caring towards her patients, and kind, but she wasn't about to put up with anymore shit.

“Yes, of course, I--”

“Now.”

Draco stepped into the Recovery Ward and saw at once the vibrant, lush jungle that sprouted up all around Harry's bed. Great palms stretched over the tops of the curtains. Orange and yellow flowers with deep pink centers peaked around the edges of the partitions. He smiled to himself as he walked down the otherwise empty and plain corridor.

Draco pulled back the curtain and peeked into Harry's room. At once he saw the source of the expansive floral forest that burgeoned all around his bed and up the walls and over the armchair and empty space—the vase of flowers Draco had set on his end table glowed a soft yellow-green and pulsed magic into the now humid air of the small room. Harry himself was not visible. The bed was empty, and Draco was sure that the constant shoots of green, young trees were hiding him. Draco crossed his arms and waited. He didn't have to wait long.

“Scared, Malfoy?” Harry's head poked from between the long fronds of a fern.

Draco chuckled, “Yes, flowers, so frightening.”

Harry stepped out from behind his new trees and plants. He was wearing a pair of light blue pants and a matching t-shirt. The warmth of his skin was back and Draco looked on the visage of the Harry he used to know. Harry was grinning from ear to ear as he emerged, reveling in his joke. But as he returned to sit on the hospital bed his smile faded.

“I just—I'm sorry Draco, I don't feel sick,” Harry said. With his hands empty in his lap Harry wordlessly called for his wand. He had started to flex his magic without it, testing the boundaries of the curtained off room, trying to find the magic that always made him feel better. But he wasn't strong enough without the wand in the dampened room to do much more than this. Slowly flowers grew backwards into buds and leaves flickered away and tree trunks dimmed until everything was back as it was—a single vase of flowers on the glass end table: orange and yellow lilies and deep red, purple irises.

“I know,” Draco said as he watched the flicker of magic wind itself back up inside the vase. In his years here as a healer, none of his patients had been able to do that level of magic inside the blocked rooms without their wands. Harry was probably much stronger than he was before the attack—and he didn't even realize it, yet. “I have an idea,” Draco began, his courage immediately wavering. It had been a fantastic idea in his office, if he could just work up the audacity to share it. Harry looked up at him expectantly.

“Due to the circumstances,” Draco continued. “Because of your--” Draco came further into the room and sat down in the leather armchair across from Harry. “Because of your status in the public eye, I recognize that you don't wish to have visitors.” Draco casually ignored the possibility that Harry was embarrassed by his condition, that didn't matter. “And because I can't allow you to go wholly unsupervised for another week or more, and it would be burdensome to stay here for longer than...”

Harry fell backward onto the bed and groaned. Draco stood up and rushed over to his side.

“What's wrong?” Draco looked down worried at Harry as he lay with his eyes screwed shut. He shouldn't have needed another dosage for a while yet.

“Did you learn to explain things from your father or your mother? I'm guessing this is a Lucius trait.” Harry sat up on his elbows and grinned at Draco. There was a flare of a challenge behind his hazel green eyes. “What's the idea already?”

Draco turned flustered from Harry. “I would like to invite you to come to stay with me.”

Harry stared at the back of Draco's head. Draco was fiddling with the back of the arm chair, his thin, long fingers toying at the seam along the top edge.

“That's not, like, against the rules?”

“What rules?” Draco turned to face him again, there was just the slightest bit of pink at the tops of his cheeks.

“I don't know, the uh, healer patient rules.”

“Oh,” Draco paused. It was probably crossing some ethical boundary, but it was Harry. “Well, for you we can make an exception.” Harry smiled at this and Draco was almost certain that out of the corner of his eye he saw the lilies grow an inch taller.

“Please!” Anything to get him out of the Recovery Ward. Harry would be breaking the last remaining bit of Genna's stalwart spirit if he had to stay here another day. Draco was sure she'd be breaking down his office door just as well.

 * * *

“You still can't have your wand.”

Harry expected as much and he didn't try and fight it. They stood in the middle of the drive at Malfoy Manor. The house cast a long shadow over where they stood, but it was infinitely more interesting than the sterile limestone walls of St. Mungos. And Harry was finally able to wear his own clothes—blue jeans and a Weasley sweater from a few Christmases ago.

Draco lead Harry into the front hall of the manor. Draco held the tall, heavy doors open and Harry walked in first. For a moment he was swallowed up by the expansive shadows of the hall. Both men thought back to the scene that had played out the last time they were both in this room together. For Draco it was as vivid as the day it had happened. He saw his father and Bellatrix, and Harry disfigured and afraid. Draco straightened his shoulders and walked further into the room. The heavy front doors clicking shut behind him.

"I'll just show you to the guest room."

"Right," Harry followed Draco through the hall and towards a great and grand staircase and another hallway off to the right. At the top of the stairs Harry turned to look behind him at the East wing of the manor. It was cast in dark shadows, not unlike the majority of the house, but the whole air seemed to vibrate low and constant with something secretive. Trained as he was, Harry knew there was something sinister held in those rooms. He just did not know what. Draco continued to lead him on to the right and a modest guest suite opened up before him.

"I hope this suit's you."

Harry chuckled. "Yeah, this'll do."The bedroom itself was huge. The bed looked miles more comfortable than the hospital bed, than even his bed at Grimmauld Place. There was an attached bathroom and what looked like a closet he could get lost in. Harry stepped into the room and plopped on the bed, twisting around to sit up and look at Draco with a warm smile.

"Thank you, Draco."

Draco, caught off guard by the sight of Harry looking so at home, barely managed a nod. In just a couple of days Harry was now vibrant and strong. The pale body that had laid anonymous on that hospital bed must have belonged to someone else, in another time. Draco tried to follow the steps that had gotten him to here, to Harry Potter in his bed--in a guest bed, rather--but the days blurred into constant vials and potions and busy paperwork.

"I'll just be down the hall, if you need anything," Draco managed. Harry nodded and laid back down on the bed. Without his wand he still felt vulnerable, but Draco was here and that would be enough to assure him, that this disease would not get a hold of him with it's long, treacherous fangs.

Draco gently closed the door and walked down to his on bedroom and the small study that was connected to it, which he used as an at-home office. He set his current reports aside and pulled out of his pocketbook a large book, far too heavy to have been held in his pocketbook by anything other than magic. He set it on the center of his desk and simply stared at it for a while. It was ancient, the pages yellowed and dim, the ink on a few of them starting to fade at the corners. Draco looked at it without opening the cover for some time. Inside, he knew, he would read familiar names that he did not want to acknowledge. Like Harry had, in the last twelve years, sought to push away the grief of war, Draco had tried to push away the darkness of his family history. If it was the Carrows that Harry had encountered, then their names would be in this book, and where the names of Death Eater's were, his family's name often followed. He reached out and ran his fingers along the edge of the book cover and then took a deep breath and opened to the first pages: all known vampires and their long, desperate histories.

* * *

Harry looked into the empty, illuminated cavern and all of his senses were on edge. Something was desperately wrong. He had heard the voice, and he had been the target of several stunning spells, and he was not, actually, alone. He simply couldn't be. Harry felt that a trick was being played on him and he gripped tightly to his wand as he started to move slowly towards the open passageway. He couldn't keep his eyes on all spaces if he was going to continue onward, but his gut told him that this open clearing was more than it appeared.

A low, rumbling laugh filled the room. At first, Harry thought the walls of the cave were about to crumble, but it was just the edges of his spell beginning to dim. Harry turned and jogged down the passageway. If his memory was correct, the passageway would soon open up to the farmer's field and the village of Hogsmeade would be just a half mile beyond. Harry had a mind to discuss with Seward what exactly he had seen, and when, feeling that it had been Seward that lead him into this ridiculous trap. But the passageway did not end, and soon Harry found himself jogging into another clearing identical to the one before as if he had run in a quick circle.

Harry slowed his pace and cast another _lumos_ , as his previous spell had quickly dimmed in the immense darkness of the new cavern. He walked into the center of it and spun around the room, trying to discern just what about it felt so strange. There had to be an answer.

Just as Harry turned his gaze upward into the top crevices of the top of the cave, the fluttering of heavy, black wings blocked his view and disoriented him. He held his arms up over his head and tried to duck and run away from the creatures but soon lost his footing. He gripped his wand and threw out another white shield, trying to set it around his body so he could continue on. The shield fizzled away as it was hit by six or seven simultaneous stunning spells. All around him the creatures materialized into people. Harry stood still in the center of the people who now circled around him. He recognized the Carrows but not the others and as the room chilled again, Harry knew he was in trouble.

Harry held his wand out before him and pointed it directly into the chest of Amycus. The two of them had done terrible things to the students of Hogwarts during the height of Voldemort's power. In the battle they had been held in Ravenclaw Tower but as the dust settled in the ruins of the castle, they had disappeared along with a handful of other Death Eaters. The Ministry had hunted all Death Eaters that had run, and most of them had been caught eventually, and tried. But not all, as was increasingly evident.

Alecto chuckled and stepped forward. Harry swung his wand to point it at her and turned to face her.

"Stop right there!"

"Oh!" Alecto stopped and raised her hands in a mocking gesture, a grin spreading across her face. What Harry remembered of her was a broad and brooding woman, stern in the face, with sunken, dark eyes. Before him now she was thinner than she had been, but was no less pallid and her eyes, now, like burning pits of coal.

"I'm going to turn you all in. You've run long enough from your crimes."

"Which crimes?" Alecto asked, swaying where she stood. Her eyes glittered as she looked at each of her friends in turn. "Oh, _those_ , crimes."

Harry cocked his head to the side and scrunched his brow in confusion. Of course, _those crimes_ , what other crimes could she be referencing.

"Voldemort has long been dead."

Alecto stepped forward despite Harry's wand pointing straight at her heart. She walked slowly and Harry trembled knowing he'd have to act if she got too close, but afraid of making the first move--surrounded as he was.

"Oh he was just a fling," Alecto said, her voice edging on laughter. "You see, men like Tom Riddle and Gellert Grindelwald, they come and go. They are temporary, almost always get defeated by some scamp like you--prophecy and all of that. There are more permanent darknesses in this world."

"Stop!" Harry shouted, Alecto was just a few feet away from him now. "EXPELLIARMUS!"

But nothing flew towards him, in fact, nothing happened at all.

"I haven't used a wand in _years_."

Orange-red sparks shot towards Harry from his right, were Amycus had been. Harry threw up another shield and dashed forward, thinking to run between them and out into the next long corridor which may or may not have brought him out near Hogsmeade. But between them Alecto spread her arms and a wall of rock rose up from the earth and blocked his way. Harry skidded to a stop and tried to assess the danger.

"STUPIFY!" He shot towards Amycus and then swung his wand around and shot at Alecto. Amycus fell backward and the others around them shot similar rock walls out of the earth in sporadic spots all around Harry. Harry cast steady streams of force at the walls nearest the figures he could see--but they moved quickly and he only managed to collapse a couple of the walls, taking out just one of the wizards.

A gust of magic caught Harry as he dodged attacks from Alecto and threw him against the far wall of the cavern. Harry hit the solid rock halfway up the side and fell crumpled to the dirt. He looked up into the face of Alecto Carrow--feeling very small and vulnerable as if he were a child again. Her hair was pulled back tightly and the effect was that her face was yanked back sharp and vicious. She reminded him, almost instinctively, of Aunt Petunia, and he cowered beneath her. She descended and everything fell again into darkness.

* * *

Harry awoke in a fit with Draco standing at his bedside and looking down on him. He was pale; whether from his restless dreams or from his condition, Draco could not be sure. Nevertheless, Draco had a vial of blood in his hand to administer the first morning dose. Harry sat up on his elbows and looked straight at Draco before collapsing back into the soft mattress and closing his eyes with a soft groan.

"I don't need it," Harry pulled the blankets up to his chin and turned away from Draco.

"Of course you do."

"I just had a nightmare."

"Potter, don't be an idiot. You need it."

"What excellent bedside manor you have Healer Malfoy," Harry mumbled into the blankets.

Draco relaxed and set the vial on the table next to the bed, sitting down on the edge. A part of him wanted to reach out and caress Harry's back, he resolutely kept his hands in his lap. He didn't know why he felt that urge to take care of Harry more _intimately_.

"I'm sorry, but it's not about how you feel right now, it's about keeping your levels above the thirst."

Harry closed his eyes tightly and dared himself to let the tears come. He was that kind of monster now. Dangerous, needing a constant, vigilant eye to keep him from destruction. All he could see before him now was Alecto's horrible, toothy grin.

"Harry," Draco spoke softly.

"Alright, fine." Harry turned and reluctantly let Draco do his job.

This was how they passed the days. Draco, in the beginning, worked from home and attended to Harry at regular intervals. Harry was a decent patient, but very hard to keep still. He would wander through the guest room and the hallway and often pestered Draco in his office. Eventually, Draco gave him permission to treat the manor as his own home, if only he would avoid his mother's rooms--not because of his condition, Draco assured, but because of his mother's.

Narcissa had not been the same since the end of the war. No one had really, but she had turned inward and never came out again. Despite Draco's instructions, Harry couldn't help but turn his interest to the other end of the manor, where the rooms were dark and haunting and all of the doors were shut and locked. It reminded Harry of the war and of the basement where he and Ron had been locked up with Luna, Griphook, Dean, and Mr. Ollivander. When Harry explored the great house and it's multitude of rooms, he always felt the pull on his memories when he stepped across the threshold into Narcissa's domain. There were times Harry could still hear Hermione's tortured screams as if it was still echoing in the entrance hall down stairs, as if it was still 1998 and nothing had changed. It nagged at Harry until, when the day came that Draco left the manor for St. Mungos, he had his chance to really investigate.

The hallway that separated the two sides of Malfoy Manor wasn't well lit to begin with--Harry thought about Grimmauld Place and the interior decorating skills of rich, lonely wizards--but the East end was darker, gloomier. Harry was sure there was a definite shift as he passed the grand staircase and neared Narcissa's rooms. It felt familiar, almost.

Harry headed for the room straight in front of him. The heavy door was a dark, almost black wood, and the handle was icy cold to the touch. The door was locked. Harry instinctively reached for his wand in his pocket but it wasn't there, he still was not allowed to have it while he recovered. He placed his palm flat against the door and closed his eyes. The lock clicked open in a second. Harry smiled. He was better with a wand, usually, and he was pleasantly surprised with these new talents.

He pushed the door inward and it creaked open revealing an even darker interior. Harry stepped inside and looked around him. He squinted to see to the far edges of the room but soon adjusted to the darkness. There was a small window on the far wall and through the thin curtains a little sunlight spilled into the room. The room was a small library of sorts, with two of it's four walls made of built-in bookshelves and across the way a large oak desk littered with objects, books, and loose papers.

Harry walked up to the desk. On either side of the window there were portraits in gilded frames. Harry jumped when he made eye contact with one striking likeness of Bellatrix Lestrange. But this was not a living portrait and she was not there. It was stagnant and dusty. She looked young, her eyes were not so sunken, and her hair spiraled down her back thick and dark. Beside her was a similar one of Narcissa, and just below one of Andromeda. The three Black sisters before they were separated by the war and marriage.

Harry looked down at the desk. Strewn across it was a variety of magical objects. Some were in open boxes, others just laying in a random assortment across the desk as if they were set there just temporarily and then were forgotten. On the floor, too, were boxes filled with books and belongings stacked on top of each other and discarded. Harry turned to two large books that lay in the center of the desk. They were square and Harry thought they might be photo albums.

He was right. Harry opened the top book and a large, magical image of Bellatrix Black and Rodolphus Lestrange danced before him, of their wedding day. He turned the page and looked down at a photograph of Bellatrix and Rodolphus, flanked by their family. Bellatrix grinned straight forward, blinking perhaps more than normal, Rodolphus gripped her around the waist. Narcissa was caught in an infinite loop smoothing down the back of Andromeda's dress, fixing the shoulder strap, and breathing in, satisfied she had fixed it as she turns to face the camera and smile. Everyone is strained, this new family forced together and stiff. The wedding photos are few and far between and soon putter out until the rest of the pages are blank, likely left open for a new baby. Harry closed the book and pulled out the second one from under it.

The second photo album was older and Bellatrix wasn't in it. Harry looked for the first time on the youthful faces of Rodolphus and Rabastan Lestrange, and behind them their stern father. These then were the items Narcissa had inherited on Bellatrix's death. The Lestranges were mostly wiped out, or locked up, and Bellatrix's own husband had passed away shortly after their marriage, leaving her widowed but not exactly alone. Harry had always suspected that Bellatrix was more in love with Voldemort than any of her family, marital or blood. Harry flipped through pages of Rodolphus and distant relatives he'd have no way of recognizing, but stopped as he looked down at a photograph of a group of about ten or fifteen people. There was movement in the back of the group, but for the most part they all looked straight at the camera with straight faces and not even the hint of joy. They wore deep burgundy robes with cowl hoods around their necks. Harry felt the room grow cold as he stared down at the faces of Rodolphus, Rabastan, and Leta Lestrange and next to them looking still as they did just days ago, Alecto and Amycus Carrow.

* * *

Harry heard the crack of apparition and Draco's light steps up the stairs. Hours had passed and Harry was bent over an old journal, straining to read the faint, scrawled writing. He immediately stood and realized he had spent the whole day in this room, devouring what knowledge he could about Bellatrix, the mysterious death of her husband, and his friendship with the Carrows. He walked silently towards the door and listened for Draco. He could hear him nearing the top of the staircase. Harry stepped back into the shadows of the small study, and held his breath, waiting to be caught snooping through Draco's family history. He felt the heat of blush hit his cheeks and he slunk away, feeling guilt burn through his chest. Draco had invited him here to heal not to drudge up the past. Draco paused in the hallway. Harry watched him through the slightly open door of the study. He was wearing all black and his white hair, usually so perfectly slicked back was lightly ruffled. Under his arm he carried a large, ancient book. The leader binding was frayed on the ends and the cover was dusty and unreadable from this far away. Draco turned towards the left, towards Harry.

Harry took another step backward and his eyes fluttered closed. He could smell Draco stronger as he neared and his heart stopped in his chest as he remembered that it had been now several hours since his last dose. It must have been that he had vials of blood in his pockets, ready to administer, that was making Harry feel this way. His eyes flew open and widened as Draco stepped just before the study, and then on his way down the hall. Harry breathed again and inched closer to the doorway to watch Draco disappear into his mother's room.

Harry turned on his heels and looked once more at the study, the portraits on the wall and the humming magic of left over pieces of history, strewn across the tables and shelves. He eased the door open and stepped out into the hallway. Draco had entered a room almost at the end of the hall. Harry walked silently towards it, keeping his ears open to catch what Draco was discussing with his mother. The small part of him that thought this was intrusive and wrong dissipated with the growing thirst. He could convince himself of anything, at this point, and call it curiosity.

But Harry noticed a shift in the air as he stepped into a fog of magic and the world around him muffled into a heavy, unnatural buzz. Draco had left the door to his mother's room ajar and Harry could see them talking, but he could not hear them. Muffliato. Draco held the old book out before Narcissa opened to a page near the back, and he pointed at the words written there with concern tight across his face. Narcissa looked much like Harry had remembered her, bound tight in a long, dramatic black dress and her hair tied up in a bun. Her skin was more white than her hair, and she wore a heavy black necklace with a deep sapphire pendant. It weighed her down, shadowed her neck and sternum and Harry knew, then, what darkness it held.

Harry felt woozy and he swayed on his feet. Draco was just steps away from him. Harry started to fall and he reached forward and grabbed hold of the wall to steady himself. Draco turned and saw Harry. He set the book down on a small end table and walked towards the doorway. Harry's eyes closed and he tried to turn and walk away, back to his own room, as if he could make it there before Draco opened the door. The heavy buzz clicked away and the house was clear and silent again. Draco held out his arms and Harry fell into them.

Draco was warm, so warm. He walked Harry over to the guest room and laid him in bed. All color had drained from Harry's features: his lips were faintly blue, his cheeks ghostly, his lightning scar almost invisible against his pale skin. Draco had carefully measured out his dosages, scheduled them at regular intervals. Up until now Harry had been steadily regaining his usual strength and his magic was stronger than ever. Draco was sure he was just another couple of days away from being able to return home and handle his intake himself. Draco took pride in his work as a healer, but extra so when it was someone he cared about. And he cared for Harry, more than he thought he would have. It had hit him the moment he realized who John Doe really was, but he hadn't known it until now when his work seemed to fizzle away and Harry was again weak and needy. He was not supposed to need blood so often anymore, or so Draco had thought. He had not expected a thirst like this. Draco quickly gave Harry what he so desperately needed and Harry mumbled a soft _I'm sorry_ before he fell to sleep.

* * *

Harry flitted in and out of consciousness. What he could see was a red, brown blur, what he could feel was the grainy, roughness of rock and loose earth on the floor of the tunnel between Hogsmead and Hogwarts. He couldn't move without a wave of nausea overwhelming him and blacking out again, so he laid still and tried to listen to the voices around him.

Amycus was shouting at Alecto--his voice jarring and loud, bounding off of the walls of the small chamber they were in. Alecto was silent in response. Harry tried to catch specific words but felt too weak to hold onto his senses for longer than a few seconds at a time. They were arguing over him, and Harry had the absurd idea to run while they were otherwise distracted--but he couldn't move. He flexed his fingers for his wand were it lay just inches away from his hand. A soft blue light pulsed from beneath his palm and he felt his wand twitch towards him. But in another moment his magic broke off and he fell to darkness again.

"What are we going to do with him? ... ALECTO!? ... It wasn't supposed to be Potter!"

Harry felt his body being levitated. He opened his eyes and followed the thin string of white magic that lassoed around him and tried to bend his power to resist it. He'd rather be left to lie there. He knew it wasn't up to him anymore. But he reached for his wand once more and felt it fly into his palm, and he held it loosely while he was taken out of the chamber.

"Alecto, are you listening to me, you did this--" Alecto silenced Amycus with a swift wave of her hand. They could do magic without wands, Harry remembered, and he was afraid again. They more than outnumbered him even when he was completely in charge of his body and his magic. He was an ant to them now, nothing but a lump they could do anything to. He wouldn't be able to stop them from killing him, hurting him, or taking him to somewhere worse. He shuddered against the thoughts. Then he remembered again, they were legilimens. What kind of monsters did he now have to contend with? His eyes fell closed again and he saw through the reds of his eyelids at vague shadows passing before him. Vampires.

* * *

Harry woke up alone. He sat up in bed and looked around hoping that he might see Draco in an armchair reading, but he was not there. Harry swung his legs over the side of the bed and caught sight of a note on the side table, sitting next to two empty vials. Harry's eyes lingered on the vials, but he did not need another dose yet. He now knew those slight, almost imperceptible changes in him when the thirst began and the difference between want and need. He picked up the note from Draco. If he hadn't trusted himself, at least it would say right here that he was fully medicated and not to worry. He tossed the note back to the table, like he had been hoping for something more...well, not medical.

Draco was his healer, and that was all. And soon he wouldn't even be that anymore. Harry felt like his old self. He felt better than his old self. He stood and closed his eyes. Around him he conjured new clothes. He wore a dark suit and a black button up beneath it. He lay his usual clothing, casual slacks and sweaters over the end of the bed and looked at himself in the mirror next to the wardrobe across the way. His skin was much darker than Draco's, and his hair--no matter the amount of magic--was infinitely more tangled, but he felt, for the first time, like he belonged in this sprawling and extravagant house. He focused on his shoes, shinny black dress shoes, and flexed his wandless magic one more time to shine them. Satisfied he stepped out of the room and made his way over to the East wing, and the library he had found yesterday.

Harry opened the door and Narcissa looked up from where she sat at a small table next to the shelves, her sister's diaries opened before her. He jumped back and thought almost about closing the door and running back to his own room, but instead he just stared at her. What was it about the Malfoy's banishing his bravery with a simple glance? She was elegant, small and thin, but for the wrinkles across her face she could have been the girl in that portrait up on the wall. Around her neck, though, that humming, heavy necklace.

"Harry, I was expecting you."

"I'm sorry, I--you were?"

Narcissa closed the journal she had been reading and smiled softly at Harry. "I knew you were curious about this room yesterday. It's true, this is what's left of the House of Lestrange. Ever since she...since she past, I haven't the heart to look at any of it."

Harry nodded slowly and walked into the room, pulling a chair from the desk over to the table that Narcissa was sitting at. Bellatrix was a terrible human being, a fierce witch, strong and loyal to the death to Lord Voldemort, but she was also a sister. In the way that Petunia was, he supposed. There might have been, in some corner of that dark heart, regret.

"She married so young, you know. We were all young, arranged as it was, except for Andromeda, of course. Andromeda married--"

"Tonks. Yeah, I--I remember Sirius told me."

Narcissa nodded. "I don't think that Bellatrix was ever in love with him, I don't think she was that way, not with anyone."

Harry looked at the diary between them on the table. He had only gotten through a bit of it yesterday. It was long, detailed, complete. She poured herself into the pages, every one of her thoughts left lingering line after line.

"I think, maybe, she had a secret," Narcissa went on. Rodolphus was the one with the secret, Harry thought, Bellatrix was a pretty straight forward woman. Harry lifted his eyes to hers and saw that she was on the verge of tears. He reached forward to grab her hand but he heard again the sharp crack of apparition and Draco was suddenly in the doorway.

"Draco? Back so soon?"

"I just came to check on everything, to avoid yesterday's..." Draco trailed off. Narcissa had sat back in her chair and seemed to have difficulty breathing. A trail of tears fell down her cheek. Draco rushed forward knelt before his mother, whispering something into her ear.

"Get out, Potter!" Draco ground out and Harry rose and left at once. He turned in the hallway and watched as Draco escorted his mother into her room, a steady aura of golden magic surrounding her, calming her. Harry returned to his room, closed the door slowly behind him, and sat on the edge of the bed running through his thoughts. He saw before him a blur of faces, Bellatrix, Alecto, Narcissa, Rodolphus, and he was having trouble figuring out what it all meant.

"I told you to stay away from my mother's rooms," Draco stood in the doorway of the guest room. He was flustered and jittery, but he tried to hold his ground. He wanted to bring Harry in, but this was too close. Draco felt embarrassed, not that his mother was suffering, but that Harry might think it was because the Malfoys had lost in the war. She was allowed grief at loss, he was too, despite what any one of the outside wizarding world thought of them. Lucius sat in Azkaban. Bellatrix and Andromeda were both dead. Draco and Narcissa were alone in that great, big, empty house and it wasn't like _they_ thought. It wasn't darkness and hatred. Draco worked tirelessly to prove himself as a healer in the years after Voldemort, and here it might all be crumbling down because Potter stuck his nose in something he didn't understand.

Harry bit his lower lip. He felt like he was getting scolded back in school, but then, like he usually felt when he got scolded back in school, he still felt like he was right. He knew something that those scolding him didn't know.

"How long has she been..."

"Shut up."

"Draco," Harry sighed.

"My mother is sick." Draco said flatly, trying to cut off the conversation.

"She's wearing a horcrux."

"What!?" Draco shut the door behind him and stepped forward into the room.

"You should stay...over there." Harry stood up and held his hands out and warned Draco to stay on the other side of the room.

"Don't tell me what to do, Potter." Draco walked forward.

Harry closed his eyes and felt the pulsing, beating heart of Draco Malfoy get louder and closer to him. It was like he could feel Draco's blood flowing through his arteries in his own finger tips, and he felt his legs grow weak and that singular dizziness, that telltale sign from yesterday's fit, return. Harry knew himself enough by now, and he jumped up onto the bed and across to the other side, putting the king sized mattress between them and stumbling backward towards the far wall.

"What the hell?"

"Draco, I'm serious."

Suddenly Draco understood. He looked down at the empty vials on the bedside table, and he felt in his own pockets and knew that he didn't have any blood on him for Harry. He didn't bring any with him because, Harry shouldn't need it yet. His anger washed away and now Draco was consumed by his healer-self. He had been studying vampirism for days. He had learned of all known vampires--had studied their ways, their powers, the various different ways the condition revealed itself--and by all accounts Harry was abnormal. He shouldn't be feeling the thirst this often, not even this early in the game.

"Harry, I'll summon more vials, just..."

"No, that's not what it is."

Draco looked at him confused.

"I don't need another dose, and before you say anything..." Harry held up his hands to shush Draco knowing that he was going to reprimand him for being naive, again. The truth was that Harry knew more about this part of him that Draco would ever know despite years of study of magical disorders. "Before you say anything, just listen."

Draco visibly relaxed, and he stepped backwards a few steps away from Harry. "Okay, I'm listening."

"It's you, Draco. Your smell. It wasn't at first, in the hospital, it was just _normal_." Harry spoke towards Draco but looked to his feet, the bed, the walls, anywhere but looking into Draco's silvery blue eyes. "Well, normal, you know what I mean."

"Yes."

Harry glanced for a second at Draco's face. He was listening intently, seriously. Harry looked away.  
"But now, it's like, it's like your blood would be better than..." Harry gestured towards the vials on the table and Draco nodded, understanding. "I don't need the blood, I _want_ it. Yours. You. So if you could just stay on that side of the room, it will probably pass."

Draco smiled softly at Harry, looking wild and afraid across the bed. Draco hadn't realized how ridiculously he had wanted Harry to say something like that to him, something so absurdly romantic and stupid at the same time. He supposed that was just what was Harry Potter, what he actually loved about him. Just when had he fallen in love with Harry fucking Potter he had no idea. He had woken up with it one day and it refused to go away. But Draco knew that what he had hoped for all of this time was finally standing before him, and he just and to reach out and take it.

"So, you want me?" Draco said, walking towards the bed again.

Harry stammered and stared wildly at Draco. Shit. He wasn't supposed to look at him again, but now that he was Harry's resolve faltered. He felt the hazy cloud of desire well up inside of him again, and Draco kept moving forward. Harry's eyes fell closed. He thought he could keep himself steady, but he had never felt a thirst quite like this before. How was he supposed to keep control over a power like this? And then, when he opened his eyes again, Draco was before him reaching forward with a sure hand at the lapel of his ridiculously tight suit.

"Draco, you don't want this. I'm, I'm not good in relationships. I'm all broken. I'm a mess. I have problems. I can't sleep without having nightmares. Now I can't be awake without drinking actual blood. You don't want me." Harry rambled. Draco held up his hand and placed his fingers over Harry's lips.

"I think I can tell the wrong sort for myself, but thanks," Draco whispered into Harry's ear with a grin. Harry whimpered and turned his head up and into the crook of Draco's long, pale neck.

"Draco?"

"Please."

Harry trembled as he gently pursed his lips against Draco's neck. He could feel Draco's pulse beating erratic beneath his touch. The artery in his neck thrummed against the thin, vulnerable skin and Harry breathed in deep. Draco smelled undeniably good--clean, with just a dash of subtle, floral cologne. But underneath, the smell of his blood, which human wizards never noticed, was heady. It seemed to make sense now, Draco's hot blood; even under that porcelain exterior he was a rash and emotional man.

Draco closed his eyes as Harry moved his lips across his neck and down across his collar bone. Harry's lips were cold, at first, and his whole body seemed to struggle against the intimacy. It took everything in him not to bite down.

"Always so noble," Draco whispered. _Just bite me_. He wanted to say. He was offering himself to Harry if Harry would have the guts to take what was laid out bare for him. Harry was no doubt struggling with some kind of moral code, Draco just wanted to be fucked. They could be romantic about it later.

Harry growled, as if at that sentiment, and Draco shivered. Draco reached forward to the buttons on Harry's shirt and undid them quickly, eagerly. Harry's chest was as cold as his lips, but under Draco's hands the skin warmed and even flushed. Pages of medical theory on vampirism flashed through Draco's mind but then Harry licked a stripe up his neck to his ear and his mind went blank. Draco grabbed Harry around the waist and pulled him into his body. Harry breathed heavy in his ear and then pulled way.

"This is..." Harry started, out of breath. He looked wild now, his eyes burned dark and his hair was tousled. His open shirt and jacket were just falling off his shoulders and Draco got a good look at the powerful wizard before him. His skin was dark but for a small white scar in the center of his chest. Though he was slightly shorter than Draco, he had broader shoulders and a thicker, stronger body that looked like it could barrel through Draco without a second thought. Draco's cock stirred at the thought of that.

"...dangerous," Harry finished.

"I like it that way," Draco winked.

Harry took a step backward and backed right into a floor lamp, the shade smashed against the wall and Harry quickly grabbed it and righted it, looking flustered between the lamp and Draco.

"Are you sure that I'm the one that's in danger here?" Draco grinned and then reached for the buttons on his own shirt. He started undoing them, slower than he did Harry's, holding Harry's gaze the whole time.

"You're..." Harry's voice caught in his throat. It was taking most of his concentration not to bury his face in Draco's neck once more, but at least he no longer felt dizzy, the touching had taken care of that. Draco slipped his shirt off of his shoulders and unbuttoned his trousers. Harry broke his gaze and looked down at his thin, pale form. All across his chest were the sectumsempra scars from sixth year--they had faded, and in places healed completely, but they were still there. Harry glanced back at his neck, where the artery pulsed loudly and practically visibly to Harry. He imagined another scar there, new scars all over Draco's otherwise smooth skin. Harry was dangerous to Draco, always had been.

Draco was now down to his underwear, a pair of black briefs. He bit his lower lip and stretched his neck out for Harry, running his fingers long his pulse and down his chest, across his nipples, down his torso, to the edge of his briefs...

"Do I have to make it any more obvious, Potter?"

"This is definitely breaking the Healer-Patient rules," Harry said, but his eyes were locked on Draco's black briefs.

"Aren't you a professional rule-breaker or are you not Harry Potter?" Draco raised his eyebrow and dipped his finger under the band of his briefs. He slipped them down a bit, baring the sharp bones of his hips.

"Shut up, Malfoy."

"I'm begging you to make me."

Harry revved forward and pushed Draco back and onto the bed. The force of it knocked the wind out of Draco and he lay shocked and out of breath and spread across the mattress. Harry was at his neck again, and Harry closed his eyes tight and blinked away the rest of their clothing. Draco shivered again against Harry. He had done wandless magic before, in the heat of the moment especially, but Harry was extraordinarily powerful. It frightened him as much as it filled him with excitement. He pressed his whole body against Harry's, silently pleading with him.

"Can I?"

"Yes."

Harry ran his tongue once more against the rushing blood in Draco's neck and then he bared his teeth and bit Draco. His blood flowed across Harry's lips and he drank it up, being careful not to take another bite or to drain Draco of his life force. Harry didn't need the blood to satiate the thirst, he needed it to satiate his lust for Draco. A taste was all he needed.

Harry was harder than he had ever been in his whole life. In the fog of his blood-lust he couldn't quite decide if it was this new part of him that turned him on so much, or if it had been Draco all along. Perhaps in another version of this world they fucked like rabbits with no need for vampiric kink.

Draco whined beneath him and wrapped his legs around Harry to bring him and his cock closer to his own. Draco licked Harry's neck, along his ear, and his cheek. Harry was flushed and warm under his tongue and together their cocks throbbed. Draco locked his ankles behind Harry's calves and ground up against him.

Harry pushed himself up on his arms. Red, shimmering blood pooled and dripped off of his lips. Harry darted out his tongue to lick it up grinning at Draco. He snaked his left hand along Draco's side, feeling the edges of his scars and passing them. He ran his fingers along Draco's chest and his shoulder and pushed his bicep up above his head and gripped tightly around Draco's wrist, pinning it down on the bed beneath the many luxury pillows. With his right hand, Harry reached down and held both of their cocks together.

Draco closed his eyes and thrust upward into Harry's hand and against his hard, dark cock. Harry bucked forward and then lowered himself over Draco's torso, furiously stroking them both as they rocked into each other. Breathing heavily into Draco's neck, Harry pushed them both to climax. Draco pulled his arm out from Harry's grip and wrapped his hands tight around Harry's broad back, squeezing his legs together and digging his heels into Harry's legs as he came.

“Potter!” Draco shouted, his voice cracked and Harry chuckled.

Cum spilled over Harry's hand. He pushed himself up again and looked into Draco's eyes with a smirk. All along Draco's neck a soft line of blood trickled down to his shoulder. Harry's eyes followed it intently and he bent his neck to kiss Draco there and get one last taste. When he pulled back up, he gave a happy sigh.

“Malfoy,” Harry rolled onto his back next to Draco on the bed. He still didn't know if this was something new and terrifying and full of blood-lust, or if it was just Malfoy and what had been coming for them all along. Draco hummed and turned to curl himself into Harry's arms, snuggling his face into Harry's chest, his finger tracing the scar left behind by the horcrux twelve years ago, until they both fell asleep.

* * *

Draco was curled up in a nest of sheets on the bed in the guest room. He smiled into the pillow he cradled as he woke up from a blissful nap. He turned over onto his back and reached out for Harry next to him. A pale pink smear of blood followed the turn of his neck across the pillows and the sheets.

"Mmm, I told Genna I'd be back in no more than ten minutes. She's probably already reported me to...Harry?"

Harry stood fully clothed in front of the mirror next to the wardrobe. He was buttoning up his shirt the muggle way, but in the back pocket of his trousers Draco saw the end of his wand. He had kept it under lock in a chest in his office. He looked into Harry's bright green eyes in the mirror.

"You summoned your wand?"

"Yeah, finally!" Harry finished buttoning his shirt and looked at himself in the mirror. He didn't look as good as Draco did in all black, but he didn't look bad. "You had it under some serious charms, but you know, now that I have it, I'm not so sure I need it."

Draco felt a hot, flutter of fear through his whole body and he blushed. Harry was a powerful wizard, the most powerful he had ever known.

"Why did you get out of bed?"

Harry turned away from the mirror and looked over Draco's small form lost in bed sheets. "Now that you've finally healed me, I've got some work to do."

Draco scrunched his brow, more than a little annoyed that Harry was suddenly so bright eyed and productive when just hours ago he had been so wonderfully needy.

"I know how we're going to defeat the Carrows."

 

To be continued...

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
